Nick Ferrari

Writer and LBC radio presenter

US lesson for David Cameron: He who dares wins

IT MUST rank as the most over-used expression in politics. Whether the freshly uncovered shambolic mess up is about anything from buying guns that don’t fire properly to allowing a predatory paedophile to treat the NHS as his pimp, the tired old cliché “lessons must be learned” is sure to be trotted out.

Now, the same can be said about last week’s American election and it is a lesson none of our major political parties will enjoy.

The lesson will be most uncomfortable for David Cameron and the homework will leave him feeling positively queasy but if he ignores it he will be as embarrassed at our next general election as the Republican Party has been in the United State.

He should also bear in mind that this is the first time since 1972 that both running mates on a party ticket failed to hold their own states.

For Mitt Romney to lose Massachusetts and Paul Ryan Wisconsin to Barack Obama’s marauding Democrats shows just how hopelessly out of touch their party is. In just two-and-a-half years’ time the same could be said of the Conservatives. So the “lesson” they need to learn can be summed up in three words: change or perish. It was widely accepted that because of high unemployment and the poor economy, Obama was the most vulnerable president seeking re-election in 20 years. Records showed that every first-term president who had watched fellow Americans lose their jobs had always been booted out by angry voters.

The Obama team’s brilliance was to realise the Democrats’ core working-class, blue-collar vote was going to prove mighty tricky to land

The Obama team’s brilliance was to realise the Democrats’ core working-class, blue-collar vote was going to prove mighty tricky to land as many had been dumped out of their jobs on his watch, so they had to find new constituencies.

This is where Mr Cameron needs to pay special attention, as poll after poll has shown the core Tory vote ranges from deep frustration to boiling anger and even life-threatening apoplexy at how he has stewarded the Conservatives in the fractious Coalition. If he thinks Middle England is still behind him, he is in for a surprise as big as the national debt. These people are too busy saving for their children’s university education or struggling to pay for elderly relatives

The reason the removal vans aren’t rumbling towards the White House even as you read this is the Democrats sought out new voters, then ruthlessly (and successfully) courted them. They looked at the rapid change in demographics and noted such facts as last year, for the first time in American history, more non-white babies than white were born.

Let’s study a few statistics and I promise to limit the blitz to only the most pertinent. As the numbers for the traditional white vote crumbled to its lowest figure, the Hispanic vote soared to an unprecedented 10 per cent of the total vote and Obama got 70 per cent of them. He won 93 per cent of the black vote, 73 per cent of the Asian vote and 66 per cent of first-time voters.

Can you imagine Cameron’s Conservatives exploiting anything like this? When you study the gender breakdown, it is just as impressive. Among unmarried women he had a 38 per cent lead over his rival, a 41 per cent lead with lower income females and a 12 per cent lead among all women voters.

Cameron’s current standing with women is so pitiful one of his female MPs has decided to clear off to America and the other has gone into the TV jungle without telling him.

It is important to note that Ed Miliband does not have much to smile about either. The polls that put the Tories in the doldrums also consistently show voters would rather have Cameron handling the damaged economy than him.

Whichever party wakes up and responds the quickest to the change in the make up of British voters will reap the rewards.